Argues that the famous Russian-American novelist, accused of turning a blind eye to the horrors of history, hid this disturbing information within his fiction. "Novelist Vladimir Nabokov witnessed the horrors of his century, escaping Revolutionary Russia then Germany under Hitler, and fleeing France with his Jewish wife and son just weeks before Paris fell to the Nazis. He repeatedly faced accusations of turning a blind eye to human suffering to...

"Mikhail Sholokhov is one of the most contested recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature in the history of the award. As a young man Sholokhov's epic Quiet Flows the Don--originally Quiet Don--became an unprecedented overnight success. Yet he struggled to complete a second novel for Stalin and his feud with Boris Pasternak made international headlines. Rich with intrigue and set during the most tumultuous years of the Soviet Union, [this book]...

Drawing on newly declassified files, this is the story of how a book forbidden in the Soviet Union became a secret CIA weapon in the ideological battle between East and West. In May 1956, an Italian publishing scout paid a visit to Russia's greatest living poet, Boris Pasternak. He left carrying the manuscript of Pasternak's first and only novel, entrusted to him with these words: "This is Doctor Zhivago. May it make its way around the world." Pasternak...

The author recounts his Russian childhood, his family's flight to England in 1919, and emigre life in Paris and Berlin.

Ilya Ehrenburg is among the most prolific and notable authors of the Soviet Union. This volume is a fascinating and impressionistic memoir of the personalities and events of his life.